But unfortunately it was not only to Mr Bradlaugh himself that violence was used or threatened: those who attended his lectures or who were suspected of sympathising with his opinions sometimes ran considerable risk. For instance, he had been lecturing at Portsmouth on Monday, May 10th, on the Irish Church and the Land Question, and his lecture created considerable excitement in the town. Shortly afterwards a "converted clown" was holding forth on Portsea Common, and a man suspected to be in sympathy with Mr Bradlaugh stayed to listen. The converted one frequently addressed the new-comer as an "unhappy infidel animal," and so worked upon his pious listeners that in the end they turned upon the "infidel," who was "hissed, hooted, kicked, cuffed, and knocked about so unmercifully that he sought protection" in flight. The whole brutal mob pursued and overtook him, "his clothes were almost torn from him, and but for the assistance of several passers-by—some of whom also received rough treatment—he would probably have been killed."[102]
True, everywhere he went my father met with hate and scorn; yet everywhere he went he also met with a trust and love such as falls to the lot of few men to know. The hate and scorn passed over him, scarce leaving a trace, but the love and trust went deep into his heart, making up, as he said, for "many disappointments." At Keighley "two veterans, one eighty and one seventy-three, walked eleven miles to hear me lecture; and at Shipley another greeted me, seventy-six years old, asking for one more grip of the hand before he died."[103] On Mr Bradlaugh's return journey from Yorkshire, at every station between Leeds and Keighley men and women came to bid him good-bye; from a dozen districts round they came, "old faces and young ones, men, women, and smiling girls," and he was moved to the utmost depths of his nature to see how their love for him grew with his every visit.
Summer or winter, fair weather or foul, people would come many and many a mile to hear him speak. At Over Darwen, where he had some fine meetings that October, he found that some of the poor folk had come in from a distance of "twenty-three miles; many had come ten to sixteen miles, some walking steadily over the 'tops' through the mist and rain, and having to leave home as early as six in the morning in order to get to us; one sturdy old man declaring that he never missed when I was within twenty-five miles of his home."[104]
I should like also to note here the open-mindedness shown about this time by a Catholic priest at Seghill. Mr Bradlaugh was to lecture in the colliery schoolroom on "The Land, the People, and the Coming Struggle," but almost at the last moment the authorities would have none of such a wicked man. Upon hearing this a Catholic priest named Father O'Dyer allowed the lecture to take place in his chapel at Annitsford, and he himself took the chair. Mr Bradlaugh, of course, greatly appreciated this unlooked-for kindness on the part of Father O'Dyer, though in his surprise at such unwonted conduct he might humorously comment "the age of miracles has recommenced."
In December Mr Bradlaugh was in Lancashire—one Saturday at Middleton, the next day at Bury, where considerable excitement had been created by the burning of the National Reformer in the Bury Reform Club by one of the members; on Monday at Accrington, where the lecture was followed by a three hours' drive in the night across country, over bad and slippery roads, to Preston to catch the London train. At Preston the station was locked up, but Mr Bradlaugh managed to get inside the porters' room, where there was happily a fire, by which he dozed until the train was due. Then six hours' rail in the frosty night, and back to city work for Tuesday morning. "Who will buy our bishopric?" he asked. But to this there was no reply.
[CHAPTER XXV.]
IRELAND.
I am now come to a point in my father's history at which I must confess my utter inability to give anything like a just account of his work. All I can do—in spite of great time and labour almost fruitlessly spent in following up the slenderest clues—is to relate a few facts which must not be taken as a complete story, but merely as indicating others of greater importance. The reason for my ignorance will be found in Mr Bradlaugh's own words written in 1873:—